"Lorania, you never told me that!"

"It seemed like making fun of him, when he had been so kind. I declined as civilly as I could. I hope I didn't hurt his feelings. I meant to pay a visit to his mother and ask them to dinner, but you know I went to England that week, and somehow when I came back it was difficult. It seems a little odd we never have seen more of the Winslows, but I fancy they don't want either to intrude or to be intruded on. But he is certainly very obliging about the garden. Think of all the slips and flowers he has given us, and the advice—"

"All passed over the fence. It is funny our neighborly good offices which we render at arm's-length. How long have you known him?"

"Oh, a long time. He is cashier of my bank, you know. First he was teller, then assistant cashier, and now for five years he has been cashier. The president wants to resign and let him be president, but he hardly has enough stock for that. But Oliver says" (Oliver was Miss Hopkins's brother) "that there isn't a shrewder or straighter banker in the state. Oliver knows him. He says he is a sandy little fellow."

"Well, he is," assented Mrs. Ellis. "It isn't many cashiers would let robbers stab them and shoot them and leave them for dead rather than give up the combination of the safe!"

"He wouldn't take a cent for it, either, and he saved ever so many thousand dollars. Yes, he is brave. I went to the same school with him once, and saw him fight a big boy twice his size—such a nasty boy, who called me 'Fatty,' and made a kissing noise with his lips just to scare me—and poor little Cyril Winslow got awfully beaten, and when I saw him on the ground, with his nose bleeding and that big brute pounding him, I ran to the water-bucket, and poured the whole bucket on that big, bullying boy and stopped the fight, just as the teacher got on the scene. I cried over little Cyril Winslow. He was crying himself. 'I ain't crying because he hurt me,' he sobbed; 'I'm crying because I'm so mad I didn't lick him!' I wonder if he remembers that episode?"

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Ellis.

"Maggie, what makes you think he is falling in love with Sibyl?"

Mrs. Ellis laughed. "I dare say he isn't in love with Sibyl," said she. "I think the main reason was his always riding by here instead of taking the shorter road down the other street."

"Does he always ride by here? I hadn't noticed."

"Always!" said Mrs. Ellis. "I have noticed."

"I am sorry for him," said Lorania, musingly. "I think Sibyl is very much taken with that young Captain Carr at the Arsenal. Young girls always affect the army. He is a nice fellow, but I don't think he is the man Winslow is. Now, Maggie, advise me about the suit. I don't want to look like the escaped fat lady of a museum."

Lorania thought no more of Sibyl's love-affairs. If she thought of the Winslows, it was to wish that Mrs. Winslow would sell or rent her pasture, which, in addition to her own and Mrs. Ellis's pastures thrown into one, would make such a delightful bicycle-track.

The Winslow house was very different from the two villas that were the pride of Fairport. A little story-and-a-half cottage peeped out on the road behind the tall maples that were planted when Winslow was a boy. But there was a wonderful green velvet lawn, and the tulips and sweet-peas and pansies that blazed softly nearer the house were as beautiful as those over which Miss Lorania's gardener toiled and worried.

Mrs. Winslow was a little woman who showed the fierce struggle of her early life only in the deeper lines between her delicate eyebrows and the expression of melancholy patience in her brown eyes.

She always wore a widow's cap and a black gown. In the mornings she donned a blue figured apron of stout and serviceable stuff; in the afternoon an apron of that sheer white lawn used by bishops and smart young waitresses. Of an afternoon, in warm weather, she was accustomed to sit on the eastern piazza, next to the Hopkins place, and rock as she sewed. She was thus sitting and sewing when she beheld an extraordinary procession cross the Hopkins lawn. First marched the tall trainer, Shuey Cardigan, who worked by day in the Lossing furniture-factory, and gave bicycle lessons at the armory evenings. He was clad in a white sweater and buff leggings, and was wheeling a lady's bicycle. Behind him walked Miss Hopkins in a gray suit, the skirt of which only came to her ankles—she always so dignified in her toilets.

"Land's sakes!" gasped Mrs. Winslow, "if she ain't going to ride a bike! Well, what next?"

What really happened next was the sneaking (for no other word does justice to the cautious and circuitous movements of her) of Mrs. Winslow to the stable, which had one window facing the Hopkins pasture. No cows were grazing in the pasture. All around the grassy plateau twinkled a broad brownish-yellow track. At one side of this track a bench had been placed, and a table, pleasing to the eye, with jugs and glasses. Mrs. Ellis, in a suit of the same undignified brevity and ease as Miss Hopkins's, sat on the bench supporting her own wheel. Shuey Cardigan was drawn up to his full six feet of strength, and, one arm in the air, was explaining the theory of the balance of power. It was an uncanny moment to Lorania. She eyed the glistening, restless thing that slipped beneath her hand, and her fingers trembled. If she could have fled in secret she would. But since flight was not possible, she assumed a firm expression. Mrs. Ellis wore a smile of studied and sickly cheerfulness.

"Don't you think it very high?" said Lorania. "I can never get up on it!"

"It will be by the block at first," said Shuey, in the soothing tones of a jockey to a nervous horse; "it's easy by the block. And I'll be steadying it, of course."

"Don't they have any with larger saddles? It is a very small saddle."

"They're all of a size. It wouldn't look sporty larger; it would look like a special make. Yous wouldn't want a special make."

Lorania thought that she would be thankful for a special make, but she suppressed the unsportsmanlike thought. "The pedals are very small too, Cardigan. Are you sure they can hold me?"

"They would hold two of ye, Miss Hopkins. Now sit aisy and graceful as ye would on your chair at home, hold the shoulders back, and toe in a bit on the pedals—ye won't be skinning your ankles so much then—and hold your foot up ready to get the other pedal. Hold light on the steering-bar. Push off hard. Now!"

"Will you hold me? I am going—Oh, it's like riding an earthquake!"

Here Shuey made a run, letting the wheel have its own wild way—to reach the balance. "Keep the front wheel under you!" he cried, cheerfully. "Niver mind where you go. Keep a-pedalling; whatever you do, keep a-pedalling!"

"But I haven't got but one pedal!" gasped the rider.

"Ye lost it?"

"No; I never had but one! Oh, don't let me fall!"

"Oh, ye lost it in the beginning; now, then, I'll hold it steady, and you get both feet right. Here we go!"

Swaying frightfully from side to side, and wrenched from capsizing the wheel by the full exercise of Shuey's great muscles, Miss Hopkins reeled over the track. At short intervals she lost her pedals, and her feet, for some strange reason, instead of seeking the lost, simply curled up as if afraid of being hit. She gripped the steering-handles with an iron grasp, and her turns were such as an engine makes. Nevertheless, Shuey got her up the track for some hundred feet, and then by a herculean sweep turned her round and rolled her back to the block. It was at this painful moment, when her whole being was concentrated on the effort to keep from toppling against Shuey, and even more to keep from toppling away from him, that Lorania's strained gaze suddenly fell on the frightened and sympathetic face of Mrs. Winslow. The good woman saw no fun in the spectacle, but rather an awful risk to life and limb. Their eyes met. Not a change passed over Miss Hopkins's features; but she looked up as soon as she was safe on the ground, and smiled. In a moment, before Mrs. Winslow could decide whether to run or to stand her ground, she saw the cyclist approaching—on foot.

"Won't you come in and sit down?" she said, smiling. "We are trying our new wheels."

And because she did not know how to refuse, Mrs. Winslow suffered herself to be handed over the fence. She sat on the bench beside Miss Hopkins in the prim attitude which had pertained to gentility in her youth, her hands loosely clasping each other, her feet crossed at the ankles.

"It's an awful sight, ain't it?" she breathed, "those little shiny things; I don't see how you ever git on them."

"I don't get on them," said Miss Hopkins. "The only way I shall ever learn to start off is to start without the pedals. Does your son ride, Mrs. Winslow?"

"No, ma'am," said Mrs. Winslow; "but he knows how. When he was a boy nothing would do but he must have a bicycle, one of those things most as big as a mill wheel, and if you fell off you broke yourself somewhere, sure. I always expected he'd be brought home in pieces. So I don't think he'd have any manner of difficulty. Why, look at your friend; she's 'most riding alone!"

"She could always do everything better than I," cried Lorania, with ungrudging admiration. "See how she jumps off! Now I can't jump off any more than I can jump on. It seems so ridiculous to be told to press hard on the pedal on the side where you want to jump, and swing your further leg over first, and cut a kind of a figure eight with your legs, and turn your wheel the way you don't want to go—all at once. While I'm trying to think of all those directions I always fall off. I got that wheel only yesterday, and fell before I even got away from the block. One of my arms looks like a Persian ribbon."

Mrs. Winslow cried out in unfeigned sympathy. She wished Miss Hopkins would use her liniment that she used for Cyril when he was hurt by the burglars at the bank; he was bruised "terrible."

"That must have been an awful time to you," said Lorania, looking with more interest than she had ever felt on the meek little woman; and she noticed the tremble in the decorously clasped hands.

"Yes, ma'am," was all she said.

"I've often looked over at you on the piazza, and thought how cosey you looked. Mr. Winslow always seems to be at home evenings."

"Yes, ma'am. We sit a great deal on the piazza. Cyril's a good boy; he wa'n't nine when his father died; and he's been like a man helping me. There never was a boy had such willing little feet. And he'd set right there on the steps and pat my slipper and say what he'd git me when he got to earning money; and he's got me every last thing, foolish and all, that he said. There's that black satin gown, a sin and a shame for a plain body like me, but he would git it. Cyril's got a beautiful disposition too, jest like his pa's, and he's a handy man about the house, and prompt at his meals. I wonder sometimes if Cyril was to git married if his wife would mind his running over now and then and setting with me awhile."

She was speaking more rapidly, and her eyes strayed wistfully over to the Hopkins piazza, where Sibyl was sitting with the young soldier. Lorania looked at her pityingly.

"Why, surely," said she.

"Mothers have kinder selfish feelings," said Mrs. Winslow, moistening her lips and drawing a quick breath, still watching the girl on the piazza. "It's so sweet and peaceful for them, they forget their sons may want something more. But it's kinder hard giving all your little comforts up at once when you've had him right with you so long, and could cook just what he liked, and go right into his room nights if he coughed. It's all right, all right, but it's kinder hard. And beautiful young ladies that have had everything all their lives might—might not understand that a homespun old mother isn't wanting to force herself on them at all when they have company, and they have no call to fear it."

There was no doubt, however obscure the words seemed, that Mrs. Winslow had a clear purpose in her mind, nor that she was tremendously in earnest. Little blotches of red dabbled her cheeks, her breath came more quickly, and she swallowed between her words. Lorania could see the quiver in the muscles of her throat. She clasped her hands tight lest they should shake. "He's in love with Sibyl," thought Lorania. "The poor woman!" She felt sorry for her, and she spoke gently and reassuringly:

"No girl with a good heart can help feeling tenderly towards her husband's mother."

Mrs. Winslow nodded. "You're real comforting," said she. She was silent a moment, and then said, in a different tone: "You 'ain't got a large enough track. Wouldn't you like to have our pasture too?"

Lorania expressed her gratitude, and invited the Winslows to see the practice.

"My niece will come out to-morrow," she said, graciously.

"Yes? She's a real fine-appearing young lady," said Mrs. Winslow.

Both the cyclists exulted. Neither of them, however, was prepared to behold the track made and the fence down the very next morning when they came out, about ten o'clock, to the west side of Miss Hopkins's boundaries.

"As sure as you live, Maggie," exclaimed Lorania, eagerly, "he's got it all done! Now that is something like a lover. I only hope his heart won't be bruised as black and blue as I am with the wheel!"

"Shuey says the only harm your falls do you is to take away your confidence," said Mrs. Ellis.

"He wouldn't say so if he could see my knees!" retorted Miss Hopkins.

Mrs. Ellis, it will be observed, sheered away from the love-affairs of Mr. Cyril Winslow. She had not yet made up her mind. And Mrs. Ellis, who had been married, did not jump at conclusions regarding the heart of man so rapidly as her spinster friend. She preferred to talk of the bicycle. Nor did Miss Hopkins refuse the subject. To her at this moment the most important object on the globe was the shining machine which she would allow no hand but hers to oil and dust. Both Mrs. Ellis and she were simply prostrated (as to their mental powers) by this new sport. They could not think nor talk nor read of anything but the wheel. This is a peculiarity of the bicyclist. No other sport appears to make such havoc with the mind.

One can learn to swim without describing his sensations to every casual acquaintance or hunting up the natatorial columns in the newspapers. One may enjoy riding a horse and yet go about his ordinary business with an equal mind. One learns to play golf and still remains a peaceful citizen who can discuss politics with interest. But the cyclist, man or woman, is soaked in every pore with the delight and the perils of wheeling. He talks of it (as he thinks of it) incessantly. For this fatuous passion there is one excuse. Other sports have the fearful delight of danger and the pleasure of the consciousness of dexterity and the dogged Anglo-Saxon joy of combat and victory; but no other sport restores to middle age the pure, exultant, muscular intoxication of childhood. Only on the wheel can an elderly woman feel as she felt when she ran and leaped and frolicked amid the flowers as a child.

Lorania, of course, no longer jumped or ran; she kicked in the Delsarte exercises, but it was a measured, calculated, one may say cold-blooded kick, which limbered her muscles but did not restore her youthful glow of soul. Her legs and not her spirits pranced. The same thing may be said for Margaret Ellis. Now, between their accidents, they obtained glimpses of an exquisite exhilaration. And there was also to be counted the approval of their consciences, for they felt that no Turkish bath could wring out moisture from their systems like half an hour's pumping at the bicycle treadles. Lorania during the month had ridden through one bottle of liniment and two of witch-hazel, and by the end of the second bottle could ride a short distance alone. But Lorania could not yet dismount unassisted, and several times she had felled poor Winslow to the earth when he rashly adventured to stop her. Captain Carr had a peculiar, graceful fling of the arm, catching the saddle-bar with one hand while he steadied the handles with the other. He did not hesitate in the least to grab Lorania's belt if necessary. But poor modest Winslow, who fell upon the wheel and dared not touch the hem of a lady's bicycle skirt, was as one in the path of a cyclone, and appeared daily in a fresh pair of white trousers.

"Yous have now," Shuey remarked, impressively, one day—"yous have now arrived at the most difficult and dangerous period in learning the wheel. It's similar to a baby when it's first learned to walk but 'ain't yet got sense in walking. When it was little it would stay put wherever ye put it, and it didn't know enough to go by itself, which is similar to you. When I was holding ye you couldn't fall, but now you're off alone depindent on yourself, object-struck by every tree, taking most of the pasture to turn in, and not able to git off save by falling—"

"Oh, couldn't you go with her somehow?" exclaimed Mrs. Winslow, appalled at the picture. "Wouldn't a rope round her be some help? I used to put it round Cyril when he was learning to walk."

"Well, no, ma'am," said Shuey, patiently. "Don't you be scared; the riding will come; she's getting on grandly. And ye should see Mr. Winslow. 'Tis a pleasure to teach him. He rode in one lesson. I ain't learning him nothing but tricks now."

"But, Mr. Winslow, why don't you ride here—with us?" said Sibyl, with her coquettish and flattering smile. "We're always hearing of your beautiful riding. Are we never to see it?"

"I think Mr. Winslow is waiting for that swell English cycle suit that I hear about," said the captain, grinning; and Winslow grew red to his eyelids.

Lorania gave an indignant side glance at Sibyl. Why need the girl make game of an honest man who loved her? Sibyl was biting her lips and darting side glances at the captain. She called the pasture practice slow, but she seemed, nevertheless, to enjoy herself sitting on the bench, the captain on one side and Winslow on the other, rattling off her girlish jokes, while her aunt and Mrs. Ellis, with the anxious, set faces of the beginner, were pedalling frantically after Cardigan. Lorania began to pity Winslow, for it was growing plain to her that Sibyl and the captain understood each other. She thought that even if Sibyl did care for the soldier, she need not be so careless of Winslow's feelings. She talked with the cashier herself, trying to make amends for Sibyl's absorption in the other man, and she admired the fortitude that concealed the pain that he must feel. It became quite the expected thing for the Winslows to be present at the practice; but Winslow had not yet appeared on his wheel. He used to bring a box of candy with him, or rather three boxes—one for each lady, he said—and a box of peppermints for his mother. He was always very attentive to his mother.

"And fancy, Aunt Margaret," laughed Sibyl, "he has asked both auntie and me to the theatre. He is not going to compromise himself by singling one of us out. He's a careful soul. By the way, Aunt Margaret, Mrs. Winslow was telling me yesterday that I am the image of auntie at my age. Am I? Do I look like her? Was she as slender as I?"

"Almost," said Mrs. Ellis, who was not so inflexibly truthful as her friend.

"No, Sibyl," said Lorania, with a deep, deep sigh, "I was always plump; I was a chubby child! And oh, what do you think I heard in the crowd at Manly's once? One woman said to another, 'Miss Hopkins has got a wheel.' 'Miss Sibyl?' said the other. 'No; the stout Miss Hopkins,' said the first creature; and the second—" Lorania groaned.

"What did she say to make you feel that way?"

"She said—she said, 'Oh my!'" answered Lorania, with a dying look.

"Well, she was horrid," said Mrs. Ellis; "but you know you have grown thin. Come on; let's ride!"

"I never shall be able to ride," said Lorania, gloomily. "I can get on, but I can't get off. And they've taken off the brake, so I can't stop. And I'm object-struck by everything I look at. Some day I shall look down-hill. Well, my will's in the lower drawer of the mahogany desk."

Perhaps Lorania had an occult inkling of the future. For this is what happened: That evening Winslow rode on to the track in his new English bicycle suit, which had just come. He hoped that he didn't look like a fool in those queer clothes. But the instant he entered the pasture he saw something that drove everything else out of his head, and made him bend over the steering-bar and race madly across the green; Miss Hopkins's bicycle was running away down-hill! Cardigan, on foot, was pelting obliquely, in the hopeless thought to intercept her, while Mrs. Ellis, who was reeling over the ground with her own bicycle, wheeled as rapidly as she could to the brow of the hill, where she tumbled off, and abandoning the wheel, rushed on foot to her friend's rescue.

She was only in time to see a flash of silver and ebony and a streak of brown dart before her vision and swim down the hill like a bird. Lorania was still in the saddle, pedalling from sheer force of habit, and clinging to the handle bars. Below the hill was a stone wall, and farther was a creek. There was a narrow opening in the wall where the cattle went down to drink; if she could steer through that she would have nothing worse than soft water and mud; but there was not one chance in a thousand that she could pass that narrow space. Mrs. Winslow, horror-stricken, watched the rescuer, who evidently was cutting across to catch the bicycle.

"He's riding out of sight!" thought Shuey, in the rear. He himself did not slacken his speed, although he could not be in time for the catastrophe. Suddenly he stiffened; Winslow was close to the runaway wheel.

"Grab her!" yelled Shuey. "Grab her by the belt! Oh, Lord!"

The exclamation exploded like the groan of a shell. For while Winslow's bicycling was all that could be wished, and he flung himself in the path of the on-coming wheel with marvellous celerity and precision, he had not the power to withstand the never yet revealed number of pounds carried by Miss Lorania, impelled by the rapid descent and gathering momentum at every whirl. They met; he caught her; but instantly he was rolling down the steep incline and she was doubled up on the grass. He crashed sickeningly against the stone wall; she lay stunned and still on the sod; and their friends, with beating hearts, slid down to them. Mrs. Winslow was on the brow of the hill. She blesses Shuey to this day for the shout he sent up, "Nobody killed, and I guess no bones broken."

When Margaret went home that evening, having seen her friend safely in bed, not much the worse for her fall, she was told that Cardigan wished to see her. Shuey produced something from his pocket, saying: "I picked this up on the hill, ma'am, after the accident. It maybe belongs to him, or it maybe belongs to her; I'm thinking the safest way is to just give it to you." He handed Mrs. Ellis a tiny gold-framed miniature of Lorania in a red leather case.

* * * * *

The morning was a sparkling June morning, dewy and fragrant, and the sunlight burnished handle and pedal of the friends' bicycles standing on the piazza unheeded. It was the hour for morning practice, but Miss Hopkins slept in her chamber, and Mrs. Ellis sat in the little parlor adjoining, and thought.

She did not look surprised at the maid's announcement that Mrs. Winslow begged to see her for a few moments. Mrs. Winslow was pale. She was a good sketch of discomfort on the very edge of her chair, clad in the black silk which she wore Sundays, her head crowned with her bonnet of state, and her hands stiff in a pair of new gloves.

"I hope you'll excuse me not sending up a card," she began. "Cyril got me some going on a year ago, and I thought I could lay my hand right on 'em, but I'm so nervous this morning I hunted all over, and they wasn't anywhere. I won't keep you. I just wanted to ask if you picked up anything—a little red Russia-leather case—"

"Was it a miniature—a miniature of my friend Miss Hopkins?"

"I thought it all over, and I came to explain. You no doubt think it strange; and I can assure you that my son never let any human being look at that picture. I never knew about it myself till it was lost and he got out of his bed—he ain't hardly able to walk—and staggered over here to look for it, and I followed him; and so he had to tell me. He had it painted from a picture that came out in the papers. He felt it was an awful liberty. But—you don't know how my boy feels, Mrs. Ellis; he has worshipped that woman for years. He 'ain't never had a thought of anybody but her since they was children in school; and yet he's been so modest and so shy of pushing himself forward that he didn't do a thing until I put him on to help you with this bicycle."

Margaret Ellis did not know what to say. She thought of the marquis; and Mrs. Winslow poured out her story: "He 'ain't never said a word to me till this morning. But don't I know? Don't I know who looked out so careful for her investments? Don't I know who was always looking out for her interest, silent, and always keeping himself in the background? Why, she couldn't even buy a cow that he wa'n't looking round to see that she got a good one! 'Twas him saw the gardener, and kept him from buying that cow with tuberculosis, 'cause he knew about the herd. He knew by finding out. He worshipped the very cows she owned, you may say, and I've seen him patting and feeding up her dogs; it's to our house that big mastiff always goes every night. Mrs. Ellis, it ain't often that a woman gits love such as my son is offering, only he da'sn't offer it, and it ain't often a woman is loved by such a good man as my son. He 'ain't got any bad habits; he'll die before he wrongs anybody; and he has got the sweetest temper you ever see; and he's the tidiest man about the house you could ask, and the promptest about meals."

Mrs. Ellis looked at her flushed face, and sent another flood of color into it, for she said, "Mrs. Winslow, I don't know how much good I may be able to do, but I am on your side."

Her eyes followed the little black figure when it crossed the lawn. She wondered whether her advice was good, for she had counselled that Winslow come over in the evening.

"Maggie," said a voice. Lorania was in the doorway. "Maggie," she said, "I ought to tell you that I heard every word."

"Then I can tell you," cried Mrs. Ellis, "that he is fifty times more of a man than the marquis, and loves you fifty thousand times better!"

Lorania made no answer, not even by a look. What she felt, Mrs. Ellis could not guess. Nor was she any wiser when Winslow appeared at her gate, just as the sun was setting.

"I didn't think I would better intrude on Miss Hopkins," said he, "but perhaps you could tell me how she is this evening. My mother told me how kind you were, and perhaps you—you would advise if I might venture to send Miss Hopkins some flowers."

Out of the kindness of her heart Mrs. Ellis averted her eyes from his face; thus she was able to perceive Lorania saunter out of the Hopkins gate. So changed was she by the bicycle practice that, wrapped in her niece's shawl, she made Margaret think of the girl. An inspiration flashed to her; she knew the cashier's dependence on his eye-glasses, and he was not wearing them.

"If you want to know how Miss Hopkins is, why not speak to her niece now?" said she.

He started. He saw Miss Sibyl, as he supposed, and he went swiftly down the street. "Miss Sibyl!" he began, "may I ask how is your aunt?"—and then she turned.

She blushed, then she laughed aloud. "Has the bicycle done so much for me?" said she.

"The bicycle didn't need to do anything for you!" he cried, warmly.

Mrs. Ellis, a little distance in the rear, heard, turned, and walked thoughtfully away. "They're off," said she—she had acquired a sporting tinge of thought from Shuey Cardigan. "If with that start he can't make the running, it's a wonder."

"I have invited Mr. Winslow and his mother to dinner," said Miss Hopkins, in the morning. "Will you come too, Maggie?"

"I'll back him against the marquis," thought Margaret, gleefully.

A week later Lorania said: "I really think I must be getting thinner. Fancy Mr. Winslow, who is so clear-sighted, mistaking me for Sibyl! He says—I told him how I had suffered from my figure—he says it can't be what he has suffered from his. Do you think him so very short, Maggie? Of course he isn't tall, but he has an elegant figure, I think, and I never saw anywhere such a rider!"

Mrs. Ellis answered, heartily, "He isn't very small, and he is a beautiful figure on the wheel!" And added to herself, "I know what was in that letter she sent yesterday to the marquis! But to think of its all being due to the bicycle!"



The Marrying of Esther

BY MARY M. MEARS

"Set there and cry; it's so sensible; and I 'ain't said that a June weddin' wouldn't be a little nicer. But what you goin' to live on? Joe can't git his money that soon."

"He—said he thought he could manage. But I won't be married at all if I can't have it—right."

"Well, you can have it right. All is, there are some folks in this town that if they don't calculate doin' real well by you, I don't feel called upon to invite."

"I don't know what you mean," sobbed the girl. She sat by the kitchen table, her face hidden in her arms. Her mother stood looking at her tenderly, and yet with a certain anger.

"I mean about the presents. You've worked in the church, you've sung in the choir for years, and now it's a chance for folks to show that they appreciate it, and without they're goin' to—Boxes of cake would be plenty if they wa'n't goin' to serve you any better than they did Ella Plummet."

Esther Robinson lifted her head. She was quite large, in a soft young way, and her skin was as pure as a baby's. "But you can't know beforehand how they're going to treat me!"

"Yes, I can know beforehand, too, and if you're set on next month, it's none too soon to be seein' about it. I've a good mind to step over to Mis' Lawrence's and Mis' Stetson's this afternoon."

"Mother! You—wouldn't ask 'em anything?"

Mrs. Robinson hung away her dishtowel; then she faced Esther. "Of course I wouldn't ask 'em; there's other ways of findin' out besides asking. I'd bring the subject round by saying I hoped there wouldn't be many duplicates, and I'd git out of 'em what they intended givin' without seemin' to." Esther looked at her mother with a sort of fascination. "Then we could give some idea about the refreshments; for I ain't a-goin' to have no elaborate layout without I do know; and it ain't because I grudge the money, either," she added, in swift self-defence.

Mrs. Robinson was a good manager of the moderate means her husband had left her, but she was not parsimonious or inhospitable. Now she was actuated by a fierce maternal jealousy. Esther, despite her pleasant ways and her helpfulness, was often overlooked in a social way. This was due to her mother. The more pretentious laughed about Mrs. Robinson, and though the thrifty, contented housewife never missed the amenities which might have been extended to her, she was keenly alive to any slights put upon her daughter. And so it was now.

Mrs. Lawrence, a rich, childless old lady, lived next door, and about four o'clock she went over there. The girl watched her departure doubtfully, but the possibility of not having a large wedding kept her from giving a full expression to her feelings.

Esther had always dreamed of her wedding; she had looked forward to it just as definitely before she met Joe Elsworth as after her engagement to him. There would be flowers and guests and feasting, and she would be the centre of it all in a white dress and veil.

She had never thought about there being any presents. Now for the first time she thought of them as an added glory, but her imagination did not extend to the separate articles or to their givers. Esther never pictured her uncle Jonas at the wedding, yet he would surely be in attendance in his rough farmer clothes, his grizzled, keen old face towering above the other guests. She did not picture her friends as she really knew them; the young men would be fine gentlemen, and the girls ladies in wonderful toilets. As for herself and Joe, hidden away in a bureau drawer Esther had a poster of one of Frohman's plays. It represented a bride and groom standing together in a drift of orange blossoms.

Mrs. Robinson did not return at supper-time, and Esther ate alone. At eight o'clock Joe Elsworth came. She met him at the door, and they kissed in the entry. Then Joe preceded her in, and hung up his cap on a projecting knob of the what-not—that was where he always put it. He glanced into the dining-room and took in the waiting table.

"Haven't you had supper yet!"

"Mother isn't home."

He came towards her swiftly; his eyes shone with a sudden elated tenderness. She raised her arms and turned away her face, but he swept aside the ineffectual barrier. When he let her go she seated herself on the farther side of the room. Her glance was full of a soft rebuke. He met it, then looked down smilingly and awkwardly at his shoes.

"Where did you say your ma had gone?"

"She's gone to Mis' Lawrence's, and a few other places."

"Oh, calling. Old Mis' Norton goes about twice a year, and I ask her what it amounts to."

"I guess you'll find ma's calls'll amount to something."

"How's that?" he demanded.

"She's—going to try and find out what they intend giving."

"What they intend giving?"

"Yes. And without they intend giving something worth while, she says she won't invite 'em, and maybe we won't have a big wedding at all," she finished, pathetically.

Joe did not answer. Esther stole an appealing glance at him.

"Does it seem a queer thing to do?"

"Well, yes, rather."

Her face quivered. "She said I'd done so much for Mis' Lawrence—"

"Well, you have, and I've wished a good many times that you wouldn't. I'm sure I never knuckled to her, though she is my great-aunt."

"I never knuckled to her, either," protested Esther.

"You've done a sight more for her than I would have done, fixin' her dresses and things, and she with more money than anybody else in town. But your mother ain't going to call on everybody, is she?" he asked, anxiously.

"Of course she ain't. Only she said, if it was going to be in June—but I don't want it to be ever," she added, covering her face.

"Oh, it's all right," said Joe, penitently. He went over and put his arm around her. Nevertheless, his eyes held a worried look.

Joe's father had bound him out to a farmer by the name of Norton until his majority, when the sum of seven hundred dollars, all the little fortune the father had left, together with three hundred more from Norton, was to be turned over to him. But Joe would not be twenty-one until October. It was going to be difficult for him to arrange for the June wedding Esther desired. He was very much in love, however, and presently he lifted his boyish cheek from her hair.

"I think I'll take that cottage of Lanham's; it's the only vacant house in the village, and he's promised to wait for the rent, so that confounded old Norton needn't advance me a cent."

Esther flushed. "What do you suppose makes him act so?" she questioned, though she knew.

Joe blushed too. "He don't like it because I'm going to work in the factory when it opens. But Mis' Norton and Sarah have done everything for me," he added, decidedly.

Up to the time of his engagement Joe had been in the habit of showing Sarah Norton an occasional brotherly attention, and he would have continued to do so had not Esther and Mrs. Robinson interfered—Esther from girlish jealousy, and her mother because she did not approve of the family, she said. She could not say she did not approve of Sarah, for there was not a more upright, self-respecting girl in the village. But Sarah, because of her father's miserliness, often went out for extra work when the neighbors needed help, and this was the real cause of Mrs. Robinson's feeling. Unconsciously she made the same distinction between Sarah Norton and Esther that some of the more ambitious of the village mothers made between their girls and her own daughter. Then it was common talk that old Jim Norton, for obvious reasons, was displeased with Joe's matrimonial plans, but Mrs. Robinson professed to believe that the wife and daughter were really the ones disappointed. Now Esther began twisting a button of Joe's coat.

"I don't believe mother'll ask either of 'em to the wedding," said she.

When Mrs. Robinson entered, Esther stood expectant and fearful by the table. Her mother drew up a chair and reached for the bread.

"I didn't stop anywhere for supper. You've had yours, 'ain't you?"

The girl nodded.

"Joe come?"

"He just left."

But Mrs. Robinson was not to be hurried into divulging the result of her calls. She remained massively mysterious. Esther began to wish she had not hurried Joe off so unceremoniously. After her first cup of tea, however, her mother asked for a slip of paper and a pencil. "I want that pencil in my machine drawer, that writes black, and any kind of paper'll do," she said.

Esther brought them; then she took up her sewing. She was not without a certain self-restraint. Mrs. Robinson, between her sips of tea, wrote. The soft gurgle of her drinking annoyed Esther, and she had a tingling desire to snatch the paper. After a last misdirected placing of her cup in her plate, however, her mother looked up and smiled triumphantly.

"I guess we'll have to plan something different than boxes of cake. Listen to this; Mis' Lawrence—No, I won't read that yet. Mis' Manning—I went in there because I thought about her not inviting you when she gave that library party—one salt and pepper with rose-buds painted on 'em."

Esther leaned forward; her face was crimson.

"You needn't look so," remonstrated her mother. "It was all I could do to keep from laughing at the way she acted. I just mentioned that we were only goin' to invite those you were indebted to, and she went and fetched out that salt and pepper. I believe she said they was intended in the first place for some relative that didn't git married in the end."

The girl made an inarticulate noise in her throat. Her mother continued, in a loud, impressive tone:

"Mis' Stetson—something worked. She hasn't quite decided what, but she's goin' to let me know about it. Jane Watson—"

"You didn't go there, mother!"

Mrs. Robinson treated her daughter to a contemptuous look. "I guess I've got sense. Jane was at Mis' Stetson's, and when I came away she went along with me, and insisted that I should stop and see some lamp-lighters she'd got to copy from—those paper balls. She seemed afraid a string of those wouldn't be enough, but I told her how pretty they was, and how much you'd be pleased."

"I guess I'll think a good deal more of 'em than I will of Mis' Manning's salt and pepper." Esther was very near tears.

"Next I went to the Rogerses, and they've about concluded to give you a lamp; and they can afford to. Then that's all the places I've been, except to Mis' Lawrence's, and she"—Mrs. Robinson paused for emphasis—"she's goin' to give you a silver tea-set!"

Esther looked at her mother, her red lips apart.

"That was the first place I called, and I said pretty plain what I was gittin' at; but after I knew about the water-set, that settled what kind of weddin' we'd have."

* * * * *

But the next morning the world looked different. Her rheumatic foot ached, and that always affected her temper; but when they sat down to sew, the real cause of her irascibleness came out.

"Mis' Lawrence wa'n't any more civil than she need be," she remarked. "I guess she'd decided she'd got to do something, being related to Joe. She said she supposed you were expecting a good many presents; and I said no, you didn't look for many, and there were some that you'd done a good deal for that you knew better than to expect anything from. I was mad. Then she turned kind of red, and mentioned about the water-set."

And in the afternoon a young girl acquaintance added to Esther's perturbation. "I just met Susan Rogers," she confided to the other, "and she said they hated to give that lamp, but they supposed they were in for it."

Esther was not herself for some days. All her pretty dreams were blotted out, and a morbid embarrassment took hold of her; but she was roused to something like her old interest when the presents began to come in and she saw her mother's active preparations for the wedding—the more so as over the village seemed to have spread a pleasant excitement concerning the event. Presents arrived from unexpected sources, so that invitations had to be sent afterwards to the givers. Women who had never crossed the Robinson threshold came now like Hindoo gift-bearers before some deity whom they wished to propitiate. Meeting there, they exchanged droll, half-deprecating glances. Mrs. Robinson's calls had formed the subject of much laughing comment; but weddings were not common in Marshfield, and the desire to be bidden to this one was universal; it spread like an epidemic.

Mrs. Robinson was at first elated. She overlooked the matter of duplicates, and accepted graciously every article that was tendered—from a patch-work quilt to a hem-stitched handkerchief. "You can't have too many of some things," she remarked to Esther. But later she reversed this statement. Match-safes, photograph-frames, and pretty nothings accumulated to an alarming extent.

"Now that's the last pin-cushion you're goin' to take," she declared, as she returned from answering a call at the door one evening. "There's fourteen in the parlor now. Some folks seem to have gone crazy on pin-cushions."

She grew confused, and the next day she went into the parlor, which, owing to the nature of the display, resembled a booth at a church fair, and made an accurate list of the articles received. When she emerged, her large, handsome face was quite flushed.

"Little wabbly, fall-down things, most of 'em. It'll take you a week to dust your house if you have all those things standin' round."

"Well, I ain't goin' to put none of 'em away," declared Esther. "I like ornaments."

"Glad you do; you've got enough of 'em, land knows. Ornaments!" The very word seemed to incense her. "I guess you'll find there's something needed besides ornaments when you come right down to livin'. For one thing, you're awful short of dishes and bedding, and you can't ever have no company—unless," she added, with withering sarcasm, "you give 'em little vases to drink out of, and put 'em to bed under a picture-drape, with a pin-cushion or a scent-bag for a piller."

And from that time Mrs. Robinson accepted no gift without first consulting her list. It became known that she looked upon useful articles with favor, and brooms and flat-irons and bright tinware arrived constantly. Then it was that the heterogeneous collection began to pall upon Esther. The water-set had not yet been presented, but its magnificence grew upon her, and she persuaded Joe to get a spindle-legged stand on which to place it, although he could not furnish the cottage until October, and had gone in debt for the few necessary things. She pictured the combination first in one corner of the little parlor, then another, finally in a window where it could be seen, from the road.

Esther's standards did not vary greatly from her mother's, but she had a bewildered sense that they were somehow stepping from the beaten track of custom. On one or two points, however, she was firm. The few novels that had come within her reach she had conned faithfully. Thus, even before she had a lover, she had decided that the most impressive hour for a wedding was sunrise, and had arranged the procession which was to wend its way towards the church. And in these matters her mother, respecting her superior judgment, stood stanchly by her.

Nevertheless, when the eventful morning arrived she was bitterly disappointed. She had set her heart on having the church bell rung, and overlooked the fact that the meeting-house bell was cracked, till Joe reminded her. Then the weather was unexpectedly chilly. A damp fog, not yet dispersed by the sun, hung over the barely awakened village, and the little flower-girl shivered. She had a shawl pinned about her, and when the procession was fairly started she tripped over it, and there was a halt while she gathered up the roses and geraniums in her little trembling hands and thrust them back into the basket. Celia Smith tittered. Celia was the bridesmaid, and was accompanied by Joe's friend, red-headed Harry Baker; and Mrs. Robinson and Uncle Jonas, who were far behind, made the most of the delay. Mrs. Robinson often explained that she was not a "good walker," and her brother-in-law tried jocularly to help her along, although he used a cane himself. His weather-beaten old face was beaming, but it was as though the smiles were set between the wrinkles, for he kept his mouth sober. He had a flower in his button-hole, which gave him a festive air, despite the fact that his clothes were distinctly untidy. Several buttons were off: he had no wife to keep them sewed on.

Esther had given but one glance at him. Her head under its lace veil bent lower and lower. The flounces of her skirt stood out about her like the delicate bell of a hollyhock; she followed the way falteringly. Joe, his young eyes radiant, inclined his curly head towards her, but she did not heed him. The little procession was as an awkward garment which hampered and abashed her; but just as they reached the church the sun crept above the tree-tops, and from the bleakness of dawn the whole scene warmed into the glorious beauty of a June day. The guests lost their aspect of chilled waiting; Esther caught their admiring glances. For one brief moment her triumph was complete; the next she had overstepped its bounds. She went forward scarcely touching Joe's arm. Her great desire became a definite purpose. She whispered to a member of her Sunday-school class, a little fellow. He looked at her wonderingly at first, then darted forward and grasped the rope which dangled down in a corner of the vestibule. He pulled with a will, but even as the old bell responded with a hoarse clank, his arms jerked upward, and with curls flying and fat legs extended he ascended straight to the ceiling.

"Oh, suz, the Lord's taking him right up!" shrieked an old woman, the sepulchral explanation of the broken bell but serving to intensify her terror; and there were others who refused to understand, even when his sister caught him by the heels. She was very white, and she shook him before she set him down. Too scared to realize where he was, he fought her, his little face quite red, and his blouse strained up so that it revealed the girth of his round little body in its knitted undershirt.

"Le' me go," he whimpered; "she telled me to do it."

His words broke through the general amazement like a stone through the icy surface of a stream. The guests gave way to mirth. Some of the young girls averted their faces; they could not look at Esther. The matrons tilted their bonneted heads towards one another and shook softly. "I thought at first it might be a part of the show," whispered one, "but I guess it wasn't planned."

Esther was conscious of every whisper and every glance; shame seemed to engulf her, but she entered the church holding her head high. When they emerged into the sunshine again, she would have been glad to run away, but she was forced to pause while her mother made an announcement.

"The refreshments will be ready by ten," she said, "and as we calculate to keep the tables runnin' all day, those that can't come one time can come another."

After which there was a little rice-throwing, and the young couple departed. The frolic partly revived Esther's spirits; but her mother, toiling heavily along with a hard day's work before her, was inclined to speak her mind. Her brother-in-law, however, restrained her.

"Seems to me I never seen anything quite so cute as that little feller a-ringin' that bell for the weddin'. Who put him up to it, anyhow?"

"Why, Esther. She was so set on havin' a 'chime,' as she called it."

"Well, it was a real good idee! A real good idee!" and he kept repeating the phrase as though in a perfect ecstasy of appreciation.

When Esther reached home, she and Joe arranged the tables in the side yard, but when the first guest turned in at the gate her mother sent her to the house. "Now you go into the parlor and rest. You can just as well sit under that dove as stand under it," she said.

The girl started listlessly to obey, but the next words revived her like wine:

"I declare it's Mis' Lawrence, and she's bringing that water-set; she hung on to it till the last minit."

Esther flew to her chamber and donned her veil, which she had laid aside, then sped down-stairs; but when she passed through the parlor she put her hands over her eyes: she wanted to look at the water-set first with Joe. He was no longer helping her mother, and she fluttered about looking for him. The rooms would soon be crowded, and then there would be no opportunity to examine the wonderful gift.

She darted down a foot-path that crossed the yard diagonally. It led to a gap in the stone-wall which opened on a lane. Esther and Joe had been in the habit of walking here of an evening. It was scarcely more than a grassy way overhung by leaning branches of old fruit trees, but it was a short-cut to the cottage Joe had rented. Now Esther's feet, of their own volition, carried her here. She slid through the opening. "Joe!" she called, and her voice had the tremulous cadence of a bird summoning its mate; but it died away in a little smothered cry, for not a rod away was Joe, and sitting on a large stone was Sarah Norton. They had their backs towards her, and were engaged in such an earnest conversation that they did not hear her. Sarah's shoulders moved with her quick breathing; she had a hand on Joe's arm. Esther stood staring, her thin draperies circling about her, and her childish face pale. Then she turned, with a swift impulse to escape, but again she paused, her eyes riveted in the opposite direction. From where she stood the back door of her future home was visible, and two men were carrying out furniture. Involuntarily she opened her lips to call Joe, but no sound came. Yes, they had the bureau; they would probably take the spindle-legged stand next. A strong protective instinct is part of possession, and to Esther that sight was as a magnet to steel. Down the grassy lane she sped, but so lightly that the couple by the wall were as unobservant of her as they were of the wind stirring the long grass.

Sarah Norton rose. "I run every step of the way to get here in time. Please, Joe!" she panted.

He shook his head. "It's real kind of you and your mother, Sarah, but I guess I ain't going to touch any of the money you worked for and earned, and I can't help but think, when I talk to Lanham—"

"I tell you, you can't reason with him in his state!"

"Well, I'll raise it somehow."

"You'll have to be quick about it, then," she returned, concisely. "He'll be here in a few minutes, and it's cash down for the first three months, or he'll let the other party have it."

"But he promised—"

"That don't make any difference. He's drunk, and he thought father'd offer to make you an advance; but father just told him to come down here, that you were being married, and say he'd poke all your things out in the road without you paid."

The young man turned. Sarah blocked his way. She was a tall, good-looking girl, somewhat older than Joe, and she looked straight up into his face.

"See here, Joe; you know what makes father act so, and so do I, and so does mother, and mother and I want you should take this money; it'll make us feel better." Sarah flushed, but she looked at him as directly as if she had been his sister.

Joe felt an admiration for her that was almost reverence. It carried him for the moment beyond the consideration of his own predicament.

"No, I don't know what makes him act so either," he cried, hotly. "Oh Lord, Sarah, you sha'n't say such a thing!"

She interrupted him. "Won't you take it?"

He turned again: "You're just as good as you can be, but I can manage some way."

"I'll watch for Lanham," she answered, quietly, "and keep him talking as long as I can. He's just drunk enough to make a scene."

Half-way to the house, Joe met Harry Barker.

"What did she want?" he inquired, curiously.

When Joe told him he plunged into his pocket and drew out two dollars, then offered to go among the young fellows and collect the balance of the amount, but Joe caught hold of him.

"Think of something else."

"I could explain to the boys—"

"You go and ask Mrs. Lawrence if she won't step out on the porch," the other commanded; "she's my great-aunt, and I never asked anything of her before."

But Mrs. Lawrence was not sympathetic. She told Joe flatly that she never lent money, and that the water-set was as much as she could afford to give. "It ain't paid for, though," she added; "and if you'd rather have the money, I suppose I can send it back. But seems to me I shouldn't have been in such an awful hurry to git married; I should 'a' waited a month or so, till I had something to git married on. But you're just like your father—never had no calculation. Do you want I should return that silver?"

Joe hesitated. It was an easy way out of the difficulty. Then a vision of Esther rose before him, and the innocent preparations she had been making for the display of the gift; "No," he answered, shortly. And Mrs. Lawrence, with a shake of the shoulders as though she threw off all responsibility in her young relative's affairs, bustled away. "I'm going to keep that water-set if everything else has to go," he declared to the astonished Harry. "Let 'em set me out in the road; I guess I'll git along." He had a humorous vision of himself and Esther trudging forth, with the water-set between them, to seek their fortune.

He flung himself from the porch, and was confronted by Jonas Ingram. The old fellow emerged from behind a lilac-bush with a guilty yet excited air.

"Young man, I ain't given to eaves-dropping, but I was strollin' along here and I heered it all; and as I was calculatin' to give my niece a present—" He broke off and laid a hand on Joe's arm. "Where is that dod-blasted fool of a Lanham? I'll pay him; then I'll break every bone in his dum body!" he exclaimed, waxing profane. "Come here disturbin' decent folks' weddin's! Where is he?"

He started off down the path, striking out savagely with his stick. Joe watched him a moment, then put after him, and Harry Barker followed.

"If this ain't the liveliest weddin'!"

Nevertheless, he was disappointed in his expectations of an encounter. When the trio emerged through the gap in the wall they found only Sarah Norton awaiting them.

"Lanham's come and gone," she announced. "No, I didn't give him a thing, except a piece of my mind," she answered, in response to a look from Joe. "I told him that he was acting like a fool; that father was in for a thousand dollars to you in the fall, and that you would pay then, as you promised, and that he'd better clear out."

"Oh, if I could jest git a holt of him!" muttered Jonas Ingram.

"That seemed to sober him," continued the girl; "but he said he wasn't the only one that had got scared; that Merrill was going for his tables and chairs; but Lanham said he'd run up to the cottage, and if he was there, he'd send him off. You see, father threw out as if he wasn't owing you anything," she added, in a lower voice, "and that's what stirred 'em up."

Joe turned white, in a sudden heat of anger—the first he had shown, "I'll stir him—" he began; then his eyes met hers. He reddened. "Oh, Sarah, I'm ever so much obliged to you!"

"It was nothing. I guess it was lucky I wasn't invited to the wedding, though." She laughed, and started away, leaving Joe abashed. She glanced back. "I hope none of this foolishness'll reach Mis' Elsworth's ears," she called, in a friendly voice.

"I hope it won't," muttered Joe, fervently, and stood watching her till the old man pulled his sleeve.

"Lanham may not keep his word to the girl. Best go down there, hadn't we?"

The young man made no answer, but turned and ran. He longed for some one to wreak vengeance on. The other two had difficulty in keeping up with him. The first object that attracted their attention was the bureau. It was standing beside the back steps. Joe tried the door; it was fastened. He drew forth the key and fitted it into the lock, but still the door did not yield. He turned and faced the others. "Some one's in there!"

Jonas Ingram broke forth into an oath. He shook his cane at the house.

"Some one's in there, and they've got the door bolted on the inside," continued Joe. His voice had a strange sound even to himself. He seemed to be looking on at his own wrath. He strode around to a window, but the blinds were closed; the blinds were closed all over the house; every door was barred. Whoever was inside was in utter darkness. Joe came back and gave the door a violent shake; then they all listened, but only the pecking of a hen along the walk broke the silence.

"I'll get a crowbar," suggested Harry, scowling in the fierce sunlight. Jonas Ingram stood with his hair blowing out from under his hat and his stick grasped firmly in his gnarled old hand. He was all ready to strike. His chin was thrust out rigidly. They both pressed close to Joe, but he did not heed them. He put one shoulder against a panel; every muscle was set.

"Whoever you are, if I have to break this door down—"

There was a soft commotion on the inside and the bolt was drawn. Joe, with the other two at his heels, fairly burst into the darkened place, just in time to see a white figure dart across the room and cast itself in a corner. For an instant they could only blink. The figure wrapped its white arms about some object.

"You can have everything but this table; you can't have—this." The words ended in a frightened sob.

"Esther!"

"Oh, Joe!" She struggled to her feet, then shrank back against the wall. "Oh, I didn't know it was you. Go 'way! go 'way!"

"Why, Esther, what do you mean?" He started towards her, but she turned on him.

"Where is she?"

"Where's who?"

She did not reply, but standing against the wall, she stared at him with a passionate scorn.

"You don't mean Sarah Norton?" asked Joe, slowly. Esther quivered. "Why, she came to tell me of the trouble her father was trying to get me into. But how did you come here, Esther? How did you know anything about it?"

She did not answer. Her head sank.

"How did you, Esther?"

"I saw—you in the lane," she faltered, then caught up her veil as though it had been a pinafore. Joe went up to her, and Jonas Ingram took hold of Harry Barker, and the two stepped outside, but not out of ear-shot; they were still curious. They could hear Esther's sobbing voice at intervals. "I tried to make 'em stop, but they wouldn't, and I slipped in past 'em and bolted the door; and when you came, I thought it was them—and, oh! ain't they our things, Joe?"

The old man thrust his head in at the door. "Yes," he roared, then withdrew.

"And won't they take the table away?"

"No," he roared again. "I'd just like to see 'em!"

Esther wept harder. "Oh, I wish they would; I ought to give 'em up. I didn't care for them after I thought—that. It was just that I had to have something I wouldn't let go, and I tried to think only of saving the table for the water-set."

"Come mighty near bein' no water-set," muttered Jonas to himself; then he turned to his companion. "Young man, I guess they don't need us no more," he said.

When he regained his sister-in-law's, he encountered that lady carrying a steaming dish. Guests stood about under the trees or sat at the long tables.

"For mercy sakes, Jonas, have you seen Esther? She made fuss enough about havin' that dove fixed up in the parlor, and she and Joe ain't stood under it a minit yet."

"That's a fact," chuckled the old fellow. "They ain't stood under no dove of peace yet; they're just about ready to now, I reckon."

* * * * *

And up through the lane, all oblivious, the lovers were walking slowly. Just before they reached the gap in the wall, they paused by common consent. Cherry and apple trees drooped over the wall; these had ceased blossoming, but a tangle of wild-rose bushes was all ablush. It dropped a thick harvest of petals on the ground. Joe bent his head; and Esther, resting against his shoulder, lifted her eyes to his face. All unconsciously she took the pose of the woman in the Frohman poster. They kissed, and then went on slowly.



Cordelia's Night of Romance

BY JULIAN RALPH

Cordelia Angeline Mahoney was dressing, as she would say, "to keep a date" with a beau, who would soon be waiting on the corner nearest her home in the Big Barracks tenement-house. She smiled as she heard the shrill catcall of a lad in Forsyth Street. She knew it was Dutch Johnny's signal to Chrissie Bergen to come down and meet him at the street doorway. Presently she heard another call—a birdlike whistle—and she knew which boy's note it was, and which girl it called out of her home for a sidewalk stroll. She smiled, a trifle sadly, and yet triumphantly. She had enjoyed herself when she was no wiser and looked no higher than the younger Barracks girls, who took up the boys of the neighborhood as if there were no others.

She was in her own little dark inner room, which she shared with only two others of the family, arranging a careful toilet by kerosene-light. The photograph of herself in trunks and tights, of which we heard in the story of Elsa Muller's hopeless love, was before her, among several portraits of actresses and salaried beauties. She had taken them out from under the paper in the top drawer of the bureau. She always kept them there, and always took them out and spread them in the lamp-light when she was alone in her room. She glanced approvingly at the portrait of herself as a picture of which she had said to more than one girlish confidante that it showed as neat a figure and as perfectly shaped limbs as any actress's she had ever seen. But the suggestion of a frown flitted across her brow as she thought how silly she was to have once been "stage-struck"—how foolish to have thought that mere beauty could quickly raise a poor girl to a high place on the stage. Julia Fogarty's case proved that. Julia and she were stage-struck together, and where was Julia—or Corynne Belvedere, as she now called herself? She started well as a figurante in a comic opera company up-town, but from that she dropped to a female minstrel troupe in the Bowery, and now, Lewy Tusch told Cordelia, she was "tooing ter skirt-tance in ter pickernic parks for ter sick-baby fund, ant passin' ter hat arount afterwarts." And evil was being whispered of her—a pretty high price to pay for such small success; and it must be true, because she sometimes came home late at night in cabs, which are devilish, except when used at funerals.

It was Cordelia who attracted Elsa Muller's sweetheart, Yank Hurst, to her side, and left Elsa to die yearning for his return. And it was Cordelia who threw Hurst aside when he took to drink and stabbed the young man who, during a mere walk from church, took his place beside Cordelia. And yet Cordelia was only ambitious, not wicked. Few men live who would not look twice at her. She was not of the stunted tenement type, like her friends Rosie Mulvey and Minnie Bechman and Julia Moriarty. She was tall and large and stately, and yet plump in every outline. Moreover, she had the "style" of an American girl, and looked as well in five dollars' worth of clothes—all home-made, except her shoes and stockings—as almost any girl in richer circles. It was too bad that she was called a flirt by the young men, and a stuck-up thing by the girls, when in fact she was merely more shrewd and calculating than the others, who were content to drift out of the primary schools into the shops, and out of the shops into haphazard matrimony. Cordelia was not lovable, but not all of us are who may be better than she. She was monopolized by the hope of getting a man; but a mere alliance with trousers was not the sum of her hope; they must jingle with coin.

It was strange, then, that she should be dressing to meet Jerry Donahue, who was no better than gilly to the Commissioner of Public Works, drawing a small salary from a clerkship he never filled, while he served the Commissioner as a second left hand. But if we could see into Cordelia's mind we would be surprised to discover that she did not regard herself as flesh-and-blood Mahoney, but as romantic Clarice Delamour, and she only thought of Jerry as James the butler. The voracious reader of the novels of to-day will recall the story of Clarice, or Only a Lady's-Maid, which many consider the best of the several absorbing tales that Lulu Jane Tilley has written. Cordelia had read it twenty times, and almost knew it by heart. Her constant dream was that she could be another Clarice, and shape her life like hers. The plot of the novel needs to be briefly told, since it guided Cordelia's course.

Clarice was maid to a wealthy society dowager. James the butler fell in love with Clarice when she first entered the household, and she, hearing the servants' gossip about James's savings and salary, had encouraged his attentions. He pressed her to marry him. But young Nicholas Stuyvesant came home from abroad to find his mother ill and Clarice nursing her. Every day he noticed the modest rosy maid moving noiselessly about like a sunbeam. Her physical perfection profoundly impressed him. In her presence he constantly talked to his mother about his admiration for healthy women. Each evening Clarice reported to him the condition of the mother, and on one occasion mentioned that she had never known ache, pain, or malady in her life. The young man often chatted with her in the drawing-room, and James the butler got his conge. Mr. Stuyvesant induced his mother to make Clarice her companion, and then he met her at picture exhibitions, and in Central Park by chance, and next—every one will recall the exciting scene—he paid passionate court to her "in the pink sewing-room, where she had reclined on soft silken sofa pillows, with her tiny slippers upon the head of a lion whose skin formed a rug before her." Clarice thought him unprincipled, and repulsed him. When the widow recovered her health and went to Newport, the former maid met all society there. A gifted lawyer fell a victim to Clarice's charms, and, on a moonlit porch overlooking the sea, warned her against young Stuyvesant. On learning that the roue had already attempted to weaken the girl's high principles, to rescue her he made her his wife. He was soon afterward elected Mayor of New York, but remained a suitor for his beautiful wife's approbation, waiting upon her in gilded halls with the fidelity of a knight of old.

Cordelia adored Clarice and fancied herself just like her—beautiful, ambitious, poor, with a future of her own carving. Of course such a case is phenomenal. No other young woman was ever so ridiculous.

"You have on your besht dresh, Cordalia," said her mother. "It'll soon be wore out, an' ye'll git no other, wid your father oidle, an' no wan airnin' a pinny but you an' Johnny an' Sarah Rosabel. Fwhere are ye goin'?"

"I won't be gone long," said Cordelia, half out of the hall door.

"Cordalia Angeline, darlin'," said her mother, "mind, now, doan't let them be talkin' about ye, fwherever ye go—shakin' yer shkirts an' rollin' yer eyes. It doan't luk well for a gyurl to be makin' hersel' attractive."

"Oh, mother, I'm not attractive, and you know it."

With her head full of meeting Jerry Donahue, Cordelia tripped down the four flights of stairs to the street door. As Clarice, she thought of Jerry as James the butler; in fact, all the beaux she had had of late were so many repetitions of the unfortunate James in her mind. All the other characters in her acquaintance were made to fit more or less loosely into her romance life, and she thought of everything she did as if it all happened in Lulu Jane Tilley's beautiful novel. Let the reader fancy, if possible, what a feat that must have been for a tenement girl who had never known what it was to have a parlor, in our sense of the word, who had never known courtship to be carried on indoors, except in a tenement hallway, and who had to imagine that the sidewalk flirtations of actual life were meetings in private parks, that the wharves and public squares and tenement roofs where she had seen all the young men and women making love were heavily carpeted drawing-rooms, broad manor, house verandas, and the fragrant conservatories of luxurious mansions! But Cordelia managed all this mental necromancy easily, to her own satisfaction. And now she was tripping down the bare wooden stairs beside the dark greasy wall, and thinking of her future husband, the rich Mayor, who must be either the bachelor police captain of the precinct, or George Fletcher, the wealthy and unmarried factory-owner near by, or, perhaps, Senator Eisenstone, the district leader, who, she was forced to reflect, was an unlikely hero for a Catholic girl, since he was a Hebrew. But just as she reached the street door and decided that Jerry would do well enough as a mere temporary James the butler, and while Jerry was waiting for her on the corner, she stepped from the stoop directly in front of George Fletcher.

"Good evening," said the wealthy, young employer.

"Good evening, Mr. Fletcher."

"It's very embarrassing," said Mr. Fletcher: "I know your given name—Cordelia, isn't it?—but your last na—Oh, thank you—Miss Mahoney, of course. You know we met at that very queer wedding in the home of my little apprentice, Joe—the line-man's wedding, you know."

"Te he!" Cordelia giggled. "Wasn't that a terrible strange wedding? I think it was just terrible."

"Were you going somewhere?"

"Oh, not at all, Mr. Fletcher," with another nervous giggle or two. "I have no plans on me mind, only to get out of doors. It's terrible hot, ain't it?"

"May I take a walk with you, Miss Mahoney?"

It seemed to her that if he had called her Clarice the whole novel would have come true then and there.

"I can't be out very late, Mr. Fletcher," said she, with a giggle of delight.

"Are you sure I am not disarranging your plans? Had you no engagements?"

"Oh no," said she; "I was only going out with me lonely."

"Let us take just a short walk, then," said Fletcher; "only you must be the man and take me in charge, Miss Mahoney, for I never walked with a young lady in my life."

"Oh, certainly not; you never did—I don't think."

"Upon my honor, Miss Mahoney, I know only one woman in this city—Miss Whitfield, the doctor's daughter, who lives in the same house with you; and only one other in the world—my aunt, who brought me up, in Vermont."

Well indeed did Cordelia know this. All the neighborhood knew it, and most of the other girls were conscious of a little flutter in their breasts when his eyes fell upon them in the streets, for it was the gossip of all who knew his workmen that the prosperous ladder-builder lived in his factory, where his had spent the life of a monk, without any society except of his canaries, his books, and his workmen.

"Well, I declare!" sighed Cordelia. "How terrible cunning you men are, to get up such a story to make all the girls think you're romantic!"

But, oh, how happy Cordelia was! At last she had met her prince—the future Mayor—her Sultan of the gilded halls. In that humid, sticky, midsummer heat among the tenements, every other woman dragged along as if she weighed a thousand pounds, but Cordelia felt like a feather floating among clouds.

The babel—did the reader ever walk up Forsyth Street on a hot night, into Second Avenue, and across to Avenue A, and up to Tompkins Park? The noise of the tens of thousands on the pavements makes a babel that drowns the racket of the carts and cars. The talking of so many persons, the squalling of so many babies, the mothers scolding and slapping every third child, the yelling of the children at play, the shouts and loud repartee of the men and women—all these noises rolled together in the air makes a steady hum and roar that not even the breakers on a hard sea-beach can equal. You might say that the tenements were empty, as only the very sick, who could not move, were in them. For miles and miles they were bare of humanity, each flat unguarded and unlocked, with the women on the sidewalks, with the youngest children in arms or in perambulators, while those of the next sizes romped in the streets; with the girls and boys of fourteen giggling in groups in the doorways (the age and places where sex first asserts itself), and only the young men and women missing; for they were in the parks, on the wharves, and on the roofs, all frolicking and love-making.

And every house front was like a Russian stove, expending the heat it had sucked from the all-day sun. And every door and window breathed bad air—air without oxygen, rich and rank and stifling.

But Cordelia was Clarice, the future Mayoress. She did not know she was picking a tiresome way around the boys at leap-frog, and the mothers and babies and baby-carriages. She did not notice the smells, or feel the bumps she got from those who ran against her. She thought she was in the blue drawing-room at Newport, where a famous Hungarian count was trilling the soft prelude to a csardas on the piano, and Mr. Stuyvesant had just introduced her to the future Mayor, who was spellbound by her charms, and was by her side, a captive. She reached out her hand, and it touched Mr. Fletcher's arm (just as a ragamuffin propelled himself head first against her), and Mr. Fletcher bent his elbow, and her wrist rested in the crook of his arm. Oh, her dream was true; her dream was true!

Mr. Fletcher, on the other hand, was hardly in a more natural relation. He was trying to think how the men talked to women in all the literature he had read. The myriad jokes about the fondness of girls for ice-cream recurred to him, and he risked everything on their fidelity to fact.

"Are you fond of ice-cream?" he inquired.

"Oh no; I don't think," said Cordelia. "What'll you ask next? What girl ain't crushed on ice-cream, I'd like to know?"

"Do you know of a nice place to get some?"

"Do I? The Dutchman's, on the av'noo, another block up, is the finest in the city. You get mo—that is, you get everything 'way up in G there, with cakes on the side, and it don't cost no more than anywhere else."

So to the German's they went, and Clarice fancied herself at the Casino in Newport. All the girls around her, who seemed to be trying to swallow the spoons, took on the guise of blue-blooded belles, while the noisy boys and young men (calling out, "Hully gee, fellers! look at Nifty gittin' out der winder widout payin'!" and, "Say, Tilly, what kind er cream is dat you're feedin' your face wid?") seemed to her so many millionaires and the exquisite sons thereof. To Mr. Fletcher the German's back-yard saloon, with its green lattice walls, and its rusty dead Christmas trees in painted butter-kegs, appeared uncommonly brilliant and fine. The fact that whenever he took a swallow of water the ice-cream turned to cold candle-grease in his mouth made no difference. He was happy, and Cordelia was in an ecstasy by the time he had paid a shock-headed, bare-armed German waiter, and they were again on the avenue side by side. She put out her hand and rested it on his arm again—to make sure she was Clarice.

One would like to know whether, in the breasts of such as these, familiar environment exerts any remarkable influence. If so, it could have been in but one direction. For that part of town was one vast nursery. Everywhere, on every side, were the swarming babies—a baby for every flag-stone in the pavements. Babies and babies, and little besides babies, except larger children and the mothers. Perambulators with two, even three, baby passengers; mothers with as many as five children trailing after them; babies in broad baggy laps, babies at the breast, babies creeping, toppling, screaming, overflowing into the gutters. Such was the unbroken scene from the Big Barracks to Tompkins Square; ay, to Harlem and to the East River, and almost to Broadway. In the park, as if the street scenes had been merely preliminary, the paths were alive, wriggling, with babies of every age, from the new-born to the children in pigtails and knickerbockers—and, lo! these were already paired and practising at courtship. The walk that Cordelia was taking was amid a fever, a delirium, of maternity—a rhapsody, a baby's opera, if one considered its noise. In that vast region no one inquired whether marriage was a failure. Nothing that is old and long-beloved and human is a failure there.

In Tompkins Park, while they dodged babies and stepped around babies and over them, they saw many happy couples on the settees, and they noticed that often the men held their arms around the waists of their sweethearts. Girls, too, in other instances, leaned loving heads against the young men's breasts, blissfully regardless of publicity. They passed a young man and a woman kissing passionately, as kissing is described by unmarried girl novelists. Cordelia thought it no harm to nudge Mr. Fletcher and whisper:

"Sakes alive! They're right in it, ain't they. 'It's funny when you feel that way,' ain't it?"

As many another man who does not know the frankness and simplicity of the plain people might have done, Mr. Fletcher misjudged the girl. He thought her the sort of girl he was far from seeking. He grew instantly cold and reserved, and she knew, vaguely, that she had displeased him.

"I think people who make love in public should be locked up," said he.

"Some folks wants everybody put away that enjoys themselves," said Cordelia. Then, lest she had spoken too strongly, she added, "Present company not intended, Mr. Fletcher, but you said that like them mission folks that come around praising themselves and tellin' us all we're wicked."

"And do you think a girl can be good who behaves so in public?"

"I know plenty that's done it," said she; "and I don't know any girls but what's good. They 'ain't got wings, maybe, but you don't want to monkey with 'em, neither."

He recollected her words for many a year afterward and pondered them, and perhaps they enlarged his understanding. She also often thought of his condemnation of love-making out-of-doors. Kissing in public, especially promiscuous kissing, she knew to be a debatable pastime, but she also knew that there was not a flat in the Big Barracks in which a girl could carry on a courtship. Fancy her attempting it in her front room, with the room choked with people, with the baby squalling, and her little brothers and sisters quarrelling, with her mother entertaining half a dozen women visitors with tea or beer, and with a man or two dropping in to smoke with her father! Parlor courtship was to her, like precise English, a thing only known in novels. The thought of novels floated her soul back into the dream state.

"I think Cordelia's a pretty name," said Fletcher, cold at heart but struggling to be companionable.

"I don't," said Cordelia. "I'm not at all crushed on it. Your name's terrible pretty. I think my three names looks like a map of Ireland when they're written down. I know a killin' name for a girl. It's Clarice. Maybe some day I'll give you a dare. I'll double dare you, maybe, to call me Clarice."

Oh, if he only would, she thought—if he would only call her so now! But she forgot how unelastic his strange routine of life must have left him, and she did not dream how her behavior in the park had displeased him.

"Cordelia is a pretty name," he repeated. "At any rate, I think we should try to make the most and best of whatever name has come to us. I wouldn't sail under false colors for a minute."

"Oh!" said she, with a giggle to hide her disappointment; "you're so terrible wise! When you talk them big words you can pass me in a walk."

Anxious to display her great conquest to the other girls of the Barracks neighborhood, Cordelia persuaded Mr. Fletcher to go to what she called "the dock," to enjoy the cool breath of the river. All the piers and wharves are called "docks" by the people. Those which are semi-public and are rented to miscellaneous excursion and river steamers are crowded nightly.

The wharf to which our couple strolled was a mere flooring above the water, edged with a stout string-piece, which formed a bench for the mothers. They were there in groups, some seated on the string-piece with babes in arms or with perambulators before them, and others, facing these, standing and joining in the gossip, and swaying to and fro to soothe their little ones. Those who gave their offspring the breast did so publicly, unembarrassed by a modesty they would have considered false. A few youthful couples, boy by girl and girl by boy, sat on the string-piece and whispered, or bandied fun with those other lovers who patrolled the flooring of the wharf. A "gang" of rude young men—toughs—walked up and down, teasing the girls, wrestling, scuffling, and roaring out bad language. Troops of children played at leap-frog, high-spy, jack-stones, bean-bag, hop-scotch, and tag. At the far end of the pier some young men and women waltzed, while a lad on the string-piece played for them on his mouth-organ. A steady, cool, vivifying breeze from the bay swept across the wharf and fanned all the idlers, and blew out of their heads almost all recollection of the furnacelike heat of the town.

Cordelia forgot her desire to display her conquest. She forgot her true self. She likened the wharf to that "lordly veranda overlooking the sea," where the future Mayor begged Clarice to be his bride. She knew just what she would say when her prince spoke his lines. She and Mr. Fletcher were just about to seat themselves on the great rim of the wharf, when an uproar of the harsh, froglike voices of half-grown men caused them to turn around. They saw Jerry Donahue striding towards them, but with difficulty, because half a dozen lads and youths were endeavoring to hold him back.

"Dat's Mr. Fletcher," they said. "It ain't his fault, Jerry. He's dead square; he's a gent, Jerry."

The politician's gilly tore himself away from his friends. The gang of toughs gathered behind the others. Jerry planted himself in front of Cordelia. Evidently he did not know the submissive part he should have played in Cordelia's romance. James the butler made no out-break, but here was Jerry angry through and through.

"You didn't keep de date wid me," he began.

"Oh, Jerry, I did—I tried to, but you—" Cordelia was red with shame.

"The hell you did! Wasn't I—"

"Here!" said Mr. Fletcher; "you can't swear at this lady."

"Why wouldn't I?" Jerry asked. "What would you do?"

"He's right, Jerry. Leave him be—see?" said the chorus of Jerry's friends.

"A-a-a-h!" snarled Jerry. "Let him leave me be, then. Cordelia, I heard you was a dead fraud, an' now I know it, and I'm a-tellin' you so, straight—see? I was a-waitin' 'cross der street, an' I seen you come out an' meet dis mug, an' you never turned yer head to see was I on me post. I seen dat, an' I'm a-tellin' yer friend just der kind of a racket you give me, der same's you've give a hundred other fellers. Den, if he likes it he knows what he's gittin'."